Shaun Hill’s Day

Looking again at the game, Shaun Hill wasn’t nearly as bad as he looked. Hill had four bad passes and only seven good ones. Vernon Davis dropped a screen and Hill missed Michael Crabtree on an out that would have been about an 18-yard gain and then threw the ball right into the chest of rookie linebacker Brian Cushing on fourth down right before the half.

What Hill didn’t do was see open receivers and he started to look at the rush rather than his receivers. The offense was starting to lose crispness under Hill. On the fourth down for example, Hill had Josh Morgan open for a first down over the middle, but he didn’t see him. But it was partially Morgan’s fault for not giving Hill a prolonged target; Morgan didn’t recognize zone and he should have stopped, instead he kept running. A few milliseconds after that, new right guard Adam Snyder went to help right tackle Tony Pashos on Mario Williams instead of staying home, it allowed the defensive tackle to rub off of center Eric Heitmann and put pressure on Hill. It’s little mistakes like that that stalled the offense.

On the whole in the first half, Hill was sacked twice, hit twice and forced to run once. Against the blitz, Hill went 0-2 with a sack. Chilo Rachal allowed a sack when he whiffed on 39-year-old Jeff Zgonia, David Baas also allowed a pressure. As for time to throw, Hill had an average of 2.48 seconds before he threw or was pressured.